Lauren Greenfield on The Queen of Versailles, Her Award-Winning Allegory About Overreaching in America

When Lauren Greenfield began filming David Siegel, the owner of Westgate Resorts, and his wife, Jackie, in 2007, she was fully intending to document the couple’s construction of the largest single-family home in the United States. At 90,000 square feet, the French-chateau-style Orlando mansion, affectionately dubbed Versailles, was to house their eight children, 19 staff members, and four dogs. Then something happened that neither the family nor the photographer turned documentary filmmaker had anticipated: the financial crisis of 2008 hit, and because of the subsequent collapse of the real-estate market, the Siegels’ time-share empire crumbled. David was forced to halt construction on Versailles, eventually putting it up for sale; Jackie cut her staff and started directing her stretch limo to Walmart instead of Gucci; and their children learned to fly commercial. Instead of a glory feature about the realization of the American dream, The Queen of Versailles ended up as a tragic, strangely sympathetic portrait of a financially overextended family trying to rein in its extravagant lifestyle.

For her work, Greenfield received the U.S. Director award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival . . . and a lawsuit from David, who claims that she depicts his time-share business “in an array of defamatory, derogatory and damaging ways.” In anticipation ofThe Queen of Versailles’ release today, Greenfield spoke to us about the inspiration behind the film, America’s culture of aspiration, and, in spite of the lawsuit, her continuing compassion for the Siegels.

What inspired you to turn your focus from photography to this documentary, and in particular, this subject?

This really grew out of my photography. I did a movie called Kids with Money, which was about kids and consumerism and, in a way, this was sort of a continuation of the same themes. But I met Jackie at a photo shoot. I was shooting Donatella Versace, and [Jackie] was one of her best customers at the time. She told me how she was building the biggest house in America. I told her how I had been working on this photography project about wealth and consumerism and I was interested in the connection between the American dream and owning one’s house. Specifically, how that house had grown to become the ultimate expression of self and success.

Aside from the house that they were building, why did you think Jackie and David would make good documentary subjects?

Well I went down to photograph her and when I did, I fell in love with the setting—the house that they live in now, the 26,000-square-foot house. She had seven kids and one adopted niece who had basically come from poverty and, overnight, was living in a mansion. They had an array of domestic help, and I was thinking of the upstairs/downstairs dynamic. In a way, it just seemed like this incredible microcosm of society that showed our values. Both Jackie and David had rags-to-riches stories. They were both self-made people.

Were Jackie and David hesitant to have you film them, even when the story was going to focus on their incredible wealth?

Jackie was always very open to the idea. David took some convincing, but I think he was proud of the fact that they were building this house. He was proud of his accomplishments, and you see that in his first interview. That was the appeal, and also he loved Jackie and was doing it partly for her.

When did you realize that the focus of your film had to change?

It wasn’t really until 2010 when they had to put their house on the market and there was a very different atmosphere in the house. There was a lot of stress and strain and dysfunction. For people that have had financial problems, this was a familiar atmosphere. It brought them down to Earth in an unexpected way. By that point, in my photography, I had documented other aspects of the financial crash. I had photographed a foreclosure city in California. I photographed a crash in Dubai. The building of the house was my original premise, but when they had to put that on the market, I realized that this was not a story about one family or even rich people. But really it was an allegory about the overreaching of America and really symbolic for what so many of us went through at different levels.

By Lauren Greenfield/Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

David didn’t seem as forthcoming as Jackie did, but still eventually talked to you about his declining financial situation. How did you gain his trust?

David was surprisingly forthcoming. It was always this amazing revelation, and in a way, it was what made me develop affection and respect for him, when he revealed himself in these interviews. In the vérité, he often was more removed and did his own thing. He was often working in his den. He would kind of isolate himself, especially as things got tough. Then in the interviews, he was an amazing storyteller and would have this unexpected candor. It was incredibly educational.

It wasn’t until an interview where David told me that he made two mistakes—one, he personally signed for all of the business loans, and, two, he never took anything off the table—that I realized the extent to which he had gambled and believed in his business. I never would have guessed that. Most middle-class people put money aside for college or for a rainy day. That you could be this wealthy and bank everything on a business was really unfathomable to me until he put it out there.

When you’re filming a documentary, you’re never really certain what story is going to unfold in front of you. When he told you about those two mistakes, did you realize that you were going to have to completely re-conceptualize the film you were making?

No. I don’t really plan in that way. I come from photography too, and I’m relatively new to filmmaking. I guess I grew up in the kind of cinéma vérité style of filmmaking, where you kind of just go in and let life unfold. That’s how I work in photography. I never storyboard or have a story at all. I had an idea that the structure of the film was going to be about the building of the house. When Jackie was talking about what it would be like to have a party in her new, fabulous house, I was thinking that maybe [the film] would end with this fabulous party. I had no idea what would happen.

This was a labor of love, and it was a long time before we had any [financial] backing whatsoever. It wasn’t until I was cutting it that I was thinking of how the pieces would go together. Although, when they put the house on the market and when David told me about banking everything on the business, I did recognize that the stakes were very dramatic and I did realize how that would fundamentally change the movie. There was a light bulb that went off, and I realized the story was bigger than them, that it was an allegory.

Had you been documenting his time-share business at that point?

Well, that’s when I became more interested in the time-share business. David was in this interesting position of selling working-class people the dream of aspirational luxury—the feeling of owning a second home. When you don’t own a second home all year long, you can own one for a week. Similarly it was his aspirations—how he kept building bigger and bigger—that proved to be the downfall for him and for the economy. It was a symbol of the subprime housing crisis.

I was also interested and amazed by the stories of the minor characters. Cliff, the limo driver, was also a speculative buyer—he bought 19 homes and ended up losing them and filing for bankruptcy. When I saw his house and how he had papers all over the house and nothing on the walls, that really resonated with me, [after] having photographed a foreclosure city. I photographed houses that had been abandoned quickly. There were photographs of their families still on the wall, 401K-plan envelopes on the floor, kids’ trophies. It was almost like running out of a fire with that drama rather than the painful long process you think about with foreclosure. I recognized that.

You speak with such affection about Jackie and David. How did those feelings influence you in the editing room? Did you find yourself cutting certain scenes because you wanted to protect your subjects?

I definitely take all of this stuff into consideration, but my guiding principle when editing is to tell a truthful story with integrity about what I saw and to be fair. I think because I was close to the family and got to know them over three years, I wanted to tell an empathetic story. Audiences have expressed that they felt surprised that they felt sympathetic towards Jackie mostly, and David too. They didn’t expect to like them, but in the end they saw them as a mirror for our own mistakes and flaws. In the edit room, I definitely wanted to make sure that the things I liked in Jackie and David came through, but not to idealize them, either. The reason I was also really attracted to their story was because they show our virtues and our flaws. David speaks to that at the end when he says, “We should be happy within our means. We should get back to reality. If I had been happy with 15 resorts instead of 28, this never would have happened. I’m a part of it, too. I wanted to build big buildings.”

We know what David thinks of the movie because of his public criticisms of it, and the lawsuit, but how does Jackie view the movie? She was at the Sundance premiere, right?

Not just at the premiere but she also came to two other festivals. She really likes the film and I think she is really moved by people’s reactions to it. A couple weeks ago in Washington, a couple women came up to her and thanked her for telling her story. I think Jackie and David are remarkably brave for telling the story with the candor they did, and giving us the vehicle to think about what happened on a larger scale.

Even when she was showing off her $17,000 pair of Gucci boots, there was something sympathetic about her.

Even if you think she won’t be, there was a big reveal about her character. You don’t know she was smart at the beginning of the movie and then you find out she has an engineering degree from R.I.T. and these are choices she made. At the beginning, you don’t know if she married David for love or money, then you see that it’s love. And by the end, it’s almost like the peeling away of an onion; you see what she’s really made of.